Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 29 Sept 2014.
Dido
and Aeneas, the third and fourth planets in the Virgilian system, are
like a (barely) habitable Venus and a habitable Mars with no Earth
between them. See here and here.
Dido
has no moon but its eccentric orbit with average radius of one a.u.,
extreme axial tilt of 38 degrees and rapid rotation period of 8 hours,
47 minutes, cause turbulent seas and weather. Approaching the planet,
Flandry sees dazzling, stormy white clouds on the dayside and aurora and
lightning on the night side.
The oxygen-nitrogen
atmosphere is unacceptably hot and dense, although breathable, but the
tropics are lethal to unprotected human beings. Tectonic activity is
intense. Vegetation is brown, red, purple and gold. The ground cover,
"carpet weed," resembles small red-brown sponges.
Yet
again, Poul Anderson imagines a planetary environment differing in
fundamental details from the terrestrial: different colors and ground
cover and a much shorter day - also, very dissimilar inhabitants. See here and here.
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